THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

But your money is welcome through their doors any time. With the continuing growth of the Internet and what it can do for you, banks are hoping you will stay home to do your banking so they can close those expensive branches and dump all those costly little people they keep there.

The case for reining in sprawling branch networks as a way to cut costs looks compelling.

The traditional branch costs roughly $2-4 million to set up and $200,000-400,000 per year to operate, according to Ed O'Brien, an analyst at Mercator Advisory Group. For big banks with thousands of branches – many of them clustered in pricey urban centers – it can get expensive.

For instance, an eight block stretch near Manhattan's Penn Station houses 14 bank branches - Astoria Bank, Apple Bank, Capital One, Citibank, HSBC, PNC, TD Bank, Sterling National Bank, Wells Fargo, two Bank of America branches, and three Chase branches.

Yet bank executives argue that, in a competitive market, they need to be footsteps away from the best customers.

Executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), the country's largest bank, say each branch earns about $1 million in annual profit, but takes a decade to reach its full potential.

Chase bankers regularly scrutinize data on branch foot traffic and what customers do while inside to determine whether a location should remain open, shut down or shrink.

The bank has shut 265 locations since 2013, roughly 5 percent of its network, but executives insist that branches remain essential for JPMorgan's relationships with customers. They are the best way to sell clients many products and services ranging from mortgages to investment advice, according to Gordon Smith, JPMorgan's head of consumer and community banking.

"Often I will be asked why don't we just accelerate closings. Why don't we close 400 or 500 branches?" Smith said at the 2016 investor day. "The answer is that customers won't go there."

Banks do keep trying to steer customers to digital tools.

They have reduced the number of tellers and moved them to the back. Their ATMs can perform more sophisticated tasks and banks have developed nifty mobile apps for routine banking needs. They are even experimenting with digital loan underwriting.

Yet customers still expect contact with bank staff and JPMorgan recently had to hire more tellers after customer complaints.

JPMorgan and Wells Fargo data show most customers visit branches several times every quarter, though younger clients tend to visit less often.

It may be too early to tell what happens in the long run when a big bank shutters many branches.

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), which has closed a quarter of its branches since 2009, could eventually serve as a test case.

BAC may be a good case for what happens as it has long been averse to smaller customers as well as staff. If they could reasonably get rid of all the people and just deal with the money they would be very happy.